This course seeks to turn learners into informed consumers of social science research. It introduces concepts, standards, and principles of social science research to the interested non-expert. Learners who complete the course will be able to assess evidence and critically evaluate claims about important social phenomena. It reviews the origins and development of social science, describes the process of discovery in contemporary social science research, and explains how contemporary social science differs from apparently related fields. It describes the goals, basic paradigms, and methodologies of the major social science disciplines. It offers an overview of the major questions that are the focus of much contemporary social science research, overall and for China. Special emphasis is given to explaining the challenges that social scientists face in drawing conclusions about cause and effect from their studies, and offers an overview of the approaches that are used to overcome these challenges. Explanation is non-technical and does not involve mathematics. Statistics and quantitative methods are not covered.
Explore the big questions in social science and learn how you can be a critical, informed consumer of social science research.
Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/QuMOAlwhpvU
After you complete Part 1, enroll in Part 2 to learn how to be a PRODUCER of Social science research.
Part 2: https://www.coursera.org/learn/social-science-research-chinese-society

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From the lesson

The Big Questions

In Week 2, we will focus on The Big Questions. By the end of this week, you should have some sense of the range of questions that are the focus of much social science research. The next week, Week 3, will expand on China specific research.

Taught By

Cameron Campbell

Transcript

[MUSIC] Hi, in this module we're going to be talking about political and social change. While it's true that there are huge differences between countries, and as we talked about, these differences may go back centuries, perhaps even millenia. It's still important to keep in mind that political and social change do occur. Countries change, regions change, societies change, and the central topic in social science is understanding why such change occurs. A related question, based on the experience of the 20th century as well as earlier periods, is trying to understand why some modes of social and political organization are more prone to change or less prone to change. Why are certain types of political regimes or forms of political organization more likely to persist while others perhaps are more fragile, more likely to fail? And then a central concern, especially in sociology, is why social movements and political movements, that is, efforts to effect change, to transform societies, why do some of them succeed and some of them fail? We talk about some examples. One of the most prominent examples is revolutions. Revolutions are a central focus of the social science, not just explaining the individual stories or specific revolutions but understanding what they have in common. So we have early on the American Revolution, the French Revolution the Russian Revolution, and the Chinese Revolution. Again, each of these are important events in their own right, and worthy of study individually. But in social science, we try to understand what these revolutions have in common. Why is it that societies can undergo rapid political change in very short order, and what are the implications of such political change? Another big topic in social sciences is understanding the success and the failure and the implications of social movements. So if we look back to American history as an example, we have some major social movements during the 20th century. The Civil Rights Movement, the more recent LGBT Rights Movement, the Women's Rights Movement, and the movement for Labor Rights earlier in the 20th century. Again, each of these movements is worthy of study in its own right and a historian would be happy to write a book or a number of books on any one of them. But as social scientists, what we want to do is understanding what these had in common. Why were they successful at the time they were? And of course, there are other movements that were not successful, and as social scientists, we want to understand what the difference was between movements that succeeded and movements that were less successful? So the study of revolutions, social movements, political movements, and social and political change in general, are central topics in social science, and they are going to remain that way for the coming decades.

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